Kajagoogoo biography
Kajagoogoo are a British pop band, best known for their hit single, "Too Shy", which reached No. 1 in the UK Singles Chart and No. 5 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in 1983.
Beginnings
The band was originally founded in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, in 1979, as a four-piece avant-garde instrumental group, called
Art Nouveau, with Nick Beggs on bass guitar, Steve Askew on lead guitar, Stuart Croxford Neale on keyboards, and Jeremy "Jez" Strode on drums. Art Nouveau released a track called "The Fear Machine". The single sold a few hundred copies, and was played on the John Peel show, but the band were unable to get a record deal.
In 1981, they advertised for a lead singer, ultimately auditioning and choosing Christopher Hamill, who then went under the stage name Limahl (an anagram of his surname). The name of the group was then changed to Kajagoogoo, coined by phonetically writing out a baby's first sounds, which gave them 'GagaGooGoo' - and with a minor alteration, it became 'Kajagoogoo'.
Success and decline
The band signed with EMI Records in July 1982, after Limahl had met Nick Rhodes (of the group Duran Duran) while Limahl was working as a waiter at the Embassy Club in London. Rhodes proceeded to co-produce the band's first single, "Too Shy" with Duran Duran's EMI producer Colin Thurston. The single was released in January 1983 and went to the top of the UK singles chart (before any of Duran Duran's singles had done so, Rhodes ruefully noted). Follow-up singles "Ooh to Be Aah" and "Hang on Now" also both reached the UK Top 20, and the group's debut album
White Feathers reached no.5 in the UK album chart. After being the support act for the Birmingham band Fashion, Kajagoogoo embarked on their own headlining "White Feathers" tour in Spring 1983 (with the May 31st show at the London Hammersmith Odeon being filmed and released on home video).
As success came, tensions began to rise in the band, which eventually culminated in Limahl being fired by the other bandmembers in mid-1983 and Beggs then taking over as lead singer. The first single by the new four-piece Kajagoogoo was "Big Apple", which made the UK Top Ten in late 1983. Their next single, "The Lion's Mouth", made the Top 30 but after that public interest waned and the hits dried up. The subsequent new album, Islands, was less successful, peaking at only no.35 in the UK. In the U.S., the band renamed themselves as Kaja, and a different edition of the Islands album was released there as Extra Play, peaking at no.185 on the Billboard charts. The single "Turn Your Back On Me" did well on the US Dance Charts peaking at no.2 for two weeks. Limahl, meanwhile, went on to equally brief success as a solo artist.
Strode then left the band and, in an attempt to gain some credibility and to lose their bubblegum image, the remaining three members relaunched as Kaja in the UK in 1985. Following the name change, the band released the single "Shouldn't Do That" (UK #63) in mid-1985. The song was featured on their third album, Crazy People's Right to Speak, but this too was unsuccessful. In 1986, the band split up.
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